


Liminal Spaces

by Kedreeva Originals (Kedreeva)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Horror, Surreal horror, liminal spaces
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 06:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13698456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva%20Originals
Summary: AO3 archived version ofthis postfrom tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am not writing this in a linear fashion, the bits won't be published in linear order. Pieces will be missing, to be added in later. You will experience the story like liminal space hopping at first.

            “They will stop you,” Arkon said, the edges of her light flickering as she perched on the lip of the dryer’s opening.

            Avery grunted, tearing at the wires in front of her with fingers already raw and slick with blood. Another minute, all she needed was another minute and this would be over. “They can try,” she growled, giving a solid yank to a bundle of black coated wiring.

            It ripped free of the wall with a crackle of noise and light, leaving behind a hole a few centimeters wide. It should have lead to a cement wall, but Avery could see the pale yellow light of a store below her. There were people, normal, regular people on the other side, oblivious to her plight.

            Arkon’s glittery, rainbow light winked out behind Avery, coating the interior of the industrial dryer with darkness.

            “They’re here,” came the echo of Arkon’s voice, a moment before blinding light enveloped Avery entirely.

 

* * *

 

            Avery blinked open eyes sticky with sleep, mind still fuzzy as she scrubbed at her face with her palms. The alarm beside her bed beeped incessantly until she flailed one hand out to stop it, plunging the room into silence. After a moment of stillness, she levered herself into an upright position and looked around her bedroom.

            Blue walls, white ceiling, white trim edging the hardwood floor. Her bed lay tucked up against the only window, across the room from a cluttered desk. Beside the closet door sat a pudgy little dresser, decorated in knick-knacks and figurines. A small alarm clock on her nightstand showed 7:02am in bold red.

            It was wrong.

            She looked down at her clean, bare hands.

            Something had happened.

            She turned her hands over, palms up, and the phantom pain of shredded skin webbed across her mind. Her fingers curled in, whole and unharmed.

            She had done something. It was important.

            The room was still, silent except for the sound of birdsong outside the window. Nothing was out of place, except the way she felt.

            A dream, perhaps. Only a dream.

            She put her feet onto the cold, wooden floor, and glanced back at her alarm clock.

            7:03am.

            Plucking her towel from the bedpost at the foot of her bed, Avery headed for the exit. A shower, first, and then work. She had too much to do today to worry about a dream.

            Unseen behind her, the alarm clock’s lights flickered as if to change.

            The new numbers read 7:03am.

            They always read 7:03am in this room.

            From atop the dresser, Arkon watched, light dimming in disappointment as Avery stepped into 7:04am, stuck once more. She had hoped this one would be different.


	2. Chapter 2

            Loren yanked his shoes from the edge of the chair and pocketed his phone as he stood. Across the laundromat, the lady that had been folding clothes did not look up at him, just set another shirt on the small pile beside her. He could not remember if she was the same lady that had been here when he arrived, but he thought it could not be; that would mean she had been here over an hour and made no progress on her folding at all.

            Stepping up to the dryer, he pulled open the door and let the warm air puff over him, smelling fresh and clean and a little bit flowery. He pulled one of the rolling baskets to his side, and began to pull out clothing into it.

            He stopped, hand on a blue hoodie he did not recognize.

            He did not recognize the grey underwear or the faded blue jeans in the basket, nor the three black shirts surrounding the hoodie. He did not recognize any of the brightly colored socks peppering the load.

            Wrong dryer, he thought, replacing the clothing he had unloaded so far and closing the door. He must have gone one machine too far. He was tired and it was already past dark outside. Easy to make a mistake.

            But the dryer to the left and the dryer to the right were empty.

            They were all empty, except his.

            Except his, which had someone else’s clothes.

            He shot a glance to the lady across the room. She certainly was not folding his clothes, but maybe she had seen someone take off with them, and so he sidled over, slow enough that she would have time to notice him approaching, and stayed on his side of the row of tables.

            “Excuse me,” he said, just loud enough to be heard over the low lub-lub of machines.

            She hesitated, hands slowing, and looked up at him without a word.

            “My laundry’s gone,” he said quickly. “I think someone took it.”

            A faint smile ghosted her lips and when she spoke her voice was soothing and even, like trying to calm to a distressed animal. “No one took it.”

            “It’s not here,” Loren said, a little hotly.

            “No,” said the woman. “You’re not there.”

            His brow furrowed. “I was,” he said, gesturing to the dryer. “I was just over there. That’s not my laundry.”

            “It’s not anyone’s laundry,” she told him, turning back to her own laundry. She folded the same shirt he had seen her fold a minute ago. “Not anymore.”

            Gooseflesh prickled along his skin at her tone. He watched her set the folded shirt aside, and pick up another from her basket. It was the same as the first.

            It _was_ the first, he realized with a start.

            “What is going on?” he asked, voice hushed. “How are you doing that?”

            “You’ll learn,” she said, just as calm and patient as before, as if nothing strange had happened. “My name is Patricia. I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I think we will both end up agreeing that’s not the case.”

            That was too much, too strange. He needed out. He needed to get out of this place, and go home, and get some sleep. In the morning he would go buy new clothes, and forget this entire strange night.

            “Okay,” he said slowly. “Thank you for your help, Patricia. I’m just going to go home.”

            “Good luck,” she said, as if she truly thought he would need it.

            He watched her place the shirt on the pile, and pull it again from her basket, and then he all but bolted for the exit. The automatic door hissed open as he approached, and he stepped out onto the grass of a sun-drenched highway rest stop he had never seen, along an empty road he had never traveled.

            At the far end of the parking lot sat a lone car, a man leaning against its hood, watching his dog look for a place to relieve itself.

            All around, the buzz of deep-summer cicadas filled the air.

            It should have been winter.


	3. Chapter 3

            “You’re not stuck in a place,” Arkon said, light beams rising to form a frill along her spine, dissipating into nothing at the edges. “You’re unstuck in a when.”

            “A when?” he asked, confused.

            She showed all of her teeth, bleeding forward into new space with a swirl of shifting colors. “Haven’t you noticed,” she asked, looking up, “that the time never changes?”

            He followed her gaze to the window, black with night, and the small, round clock beside it with both hands pointing skyward. It was always midnight at the hospital, always dark and empty and silent. He took a slow, unsteady breath and when he looked at her again, he found her looking right back.

            “You’ve come unstuck in time,” she said, the flick of her tail sending sparks scattering across the desk to disappear. “It goes before to after for most folks, but not for you.”

            “I was here before I knew you,” he objected. “I’ll be here after you leave.”

            “Do you think so?” she asked, coalescing to a new position, her head tipped. “It will still be midnight in this moment. Do you have before and after, if no time passes? What is time without them?”

            She winked out of view and he turned to look for her, finding her by the soft, rainbow glow she emitted. She swirled toward the exit and he followed as if pulled on puppet strings. As the glass double doors whisked open, he hesitated, but she simply flickered through, not stopping until she stood on the sidewalk on the other side.

            Maybe the rules worked differently for her, he thought, and crossed the threshold into the laundromat. A few feet away she sat perched atop one of the huge dryers, orange eyes bright as she peered down at him. Then she blinked out of sight and appeared in the same place, gaze fixed on a different location.

            The clock on the wall read 7:13.

            “Do you suppose this is before or after we met?” she asked, and when he looked away from the clock, she was gone.

            And he realized, belly sinking, that she was right. If these moments all existed simultaneously, without the relativity of before or after, time had no meaning. Without an after for before to travel to, time could not exist.

            Down the row of machines to his left, Patricia continued folding clothes.


	4. Chapter 4

            “There’s someone in my room,” Loren said, when he noticed the spill of rainbow light that told him Arkon had joined him again. “Someone I don’t know.”

            Arkon flickered into view beside the bottom of the mirror, putting tiny, clawed paws upon its rim to see. She did not appear surprised. “Is that your room?”

            “It was, I think,” Loren said, staring at the young woman on the other side of the mirror- his mirror, in his room, except not quite his room anymore. He could not have put a finger on anything specific that had changed, but he knew to his bones that it had. Nothing in particular was wrong, but it was not right, either. “Who is she?”

            Arkon’s color swirled and dulled. “She’s you.”

            “Me?” he echoed, watching each stroke of the brush through the girl’s long, dark hair. “I don’t understand.”

            “You traded places,” Arkon said, flowing like water as she slid from one side of the mirror to the other. “Or rather,” she mused, “I suppose she traded you in to get out.”

            Oh, Loren thought, chest tight. “She’s the reason I’m stuck here. Unstuck,” he corrected.

            Arkon did not bother to confirm. “She doesn’t remember,” she said instead, slithering between his feet only to resolidify to his left, rather than behind him. “No one ever does. I understand humans appreciate that sort of consolation.”

            Ignoring the comment, he turned away from the mirror at last. “If I leave, I won’t remember this place?” he asked. “Any of it?”

            Arkon hesitated, the edges of her light shivering. “No, you wouldn’t remember this place” she answered at last, blinking out to reappear by the door. “You wouldn’t remember that place either,” she added, indicating the mirror. “Everyone, the girl included, believes she has always been there. She’s you, now. She can never return here and you can never go back, Loren.”

            He glanced back, but the mirror only reflected the room around them again. “You’re saying that if I left, I would replace someone else. Someone new. And they would become unstuck in time, here. Like I am.”

            “Yes,” Arkon said simply, and disappeared through the doorway.


End file.
